Unforgivable
by Beeezie
Summary: Some scars last a lifetime.
The aftermath of the Second Wizarding War wasn't easy for anyone. It was raw, painful, and filled to the brim with guilty relief.

Because if everyone was being honest - and many people weren't - the losses, though significant, were well-worth the peace.

Astoria Greengrass absolutely agreed with that. Of _course_ it was worth it.

But somehow, that didn't make the nightmares go away. It didn't make the echoes of her footsteps and the squeak of the metal buckle on her bag as she walked down to the nearly-empty Potions dungeon any less unsettling, and it didn't make the goosebumps up her arms when she looked at all the empty cauldrons go away.

She dropped potions two weeks into her sixth year. It just wasn't worth the hours before and after spent trying to quell the urge to hide under her bed like she was still six years old rather than sixteen. None of her classes were easy, exactly, but she would have been happy to never step foot in the dungeons again.

[[MORE]]

At night, the breeze that swept through open window and rustled the blue hangings on the empty beds made her shiver, but she never pushed for the window to be closed, and neither did her lone dormitory mate. The windows had been bolted shut the year before to stop students from receiving unmonitored mail in the night or escaping to wreak havoc on the grounds, and now the still air gave her nightmares.

And the dormitory was eerie enough as it was.

One of the girls in their dormitory had died the previous year - she was a muggleborn, and she'd been waiting patiently for her clearance to take a Portkey to a safer country when the Ministry had fallen. It was doubtful that another girl would ever leave St. Mungo's; the events of the previous year had pushed every student to their breaking point, and she'd fallen across it. She was a halfblood, and not even a reasonably pureblooded halfblood - two of her four grandparents had been muggle, and a third had been a muggleborn. The Carrows hadn't felt the need to be particularly careful with spilling her blood, and she'd probably never be right again.

Astoria had always really liked Eliza.

Now she was left with Celeste, and her friendship with the other girl had suffered since she'd realized quite how much of a coward her supposed friend was. Celeste didn't really care about anything but her books, and Astoria was fairly certain that Celeste was how her sister had found her that night.

And that was a crime she would never be ready to forgive.

Astoria avoided opening letters from home, and over the course of the fall, they multiplied to form a semi-interrupted layer across her trunk floor. She eschewed the Hogsmeade visit in early November as well; she didn't want to risk seeing her family if they came to ask her why she hadn't answered their letters. She knew they weren't pleased - they'd even written to her Head of House to ask if she was injured - but she couldn't muster up the energy to care. There was too much resentment and guilt and shame built up around them, and she didn't want to face it.

For the first time in six years, she signed up to stay at Hogwarts for the Christmas holiday. She wrote a short and vaguely apologetic letter home to her parents along with small, inconsequential gifts that she'd ordered from an ad in the Quibbler. She even read their response, which she felt was Christmas gift enough all on its own.

She did, however, consent to meet her brother in Hogsmeade when the students were allowed to leave the castle on Christmas Day. Her brother had always been the one who'd understood her the best, and he'd always been the person in her life that she aspired to be most like. He was brave. He had principles. He would never let _anything_ stop him from doing the right thing. That was why he'd come back to Hogwarts to fight. If he'd still been at school, he'd never have left in the first place.

That was Brendon Greengrass. He never backed down from a challenge.

Astoria didn't think she'd ever stop being grateful to him for bringing her along, like it was the most natural thing in the world - never mind what the professors had said about everyone underage evacuating, she was capable of making her own decisions.

She wasn't sure why he wasn't with his family, but when he didn't offer anything beyond a picture of his daughter Johanna, who was now six months old, she didn't ask. Everyone had their secrets to keep and their burdens to bear. The war had taught her that.

She couldn't avoid the rest of her family forever, though. When the trees began to turn green and her dormitory became pleasantly cool rather than frigid even in the early hours of the morning, her stomach began to tie itself into knots, and she dragged herself onto the Hogwarts Express in June with the cheer of a Muggleborn being sent to receive a dementor's kiss.

Her homecoming was about what she had expected. Her parents fussed at her for not writing and then accepted her half-hearted apology without much trouble; they'd become good at compartmentalizing things. The issue wasn't them, not really.

The trouble started on July 2, when her sister came to call. Astoria was sitting in the kitchen nursing a cup of cold tea as she starred aimlessly out the window. She wasn't sure how she missed seeing Daphne striding down the walk, but miss it she did, because when her sister stepped through the tall and ornate doorway, Astoria was caught entirely off guard.

Daphne looked much better than Astoria felt. In fact, she looked as though she hadn't gone through a war at all; her hair was sleek and shiny, her figure pleasantly plump, and there was even a smile on her lips - though the apparent mirth didn't reach her eyes. In her presence, Astoria became infinitely more aware of the oily hair she hadn't bothered to wash often enough, the eruption of acne across her chin and forehead, and how very thin she was these days from doing little more than pick at her food.

She'd always felt like the ugly duckling to Daphne's swan, but she'd never felt it quite as profoundly as she did in this moment.

"Astoria!" There was _that_ smile again - the one that glanced across her sister's cheeks without making any other impression. "I've missed you so much!"

Astoria took one step back when her sister strode toward her, and then another. As she sidled around the heavily polished table, she reached into her back pocket to get a firmer grip on her wand. "What do you want?"

Her sister had the audacity to look puzzled. "Tori, I just came to see you. You haven't responded to any of my letters - I've been worried."

Astoria let out a loud laugh. It was not a pleasant sound. "You've been _worried?"_

"Of course. You're my sister." Her sister's eyes narrowed. "You're not still angry with me for last year, are you? That was over a year ago!"

Astoria shifted her grip on her wand. "Of course I am," she hissed. "You had _no right."_

The facade of her sister's charm and cheerfulness was beginning to slip. "You were told to leave." Daphne's voice was infuriatingly careless. "You were fifteen. You were _supposed_ to leave. McGonagall said -"

Astoria drowned her out. "You didn't _care_ what McGonagall said. You spent all year mocking her and saying you wished the Carrows would just 'take her out already.' You just wanted to control me."

True to form, Daphne didn't waste any more time mincing words. She went straight for the jugular. "Are you angry that I made you leave, or are you angry that I made you look like a coward in front of our _prodigal brother?"_

Astoria's breath caught in her throat, and she could feel her short, stubby nails digging into her palms as she fought to maintain her self-control. She had never wanted to hex her sister like this before.

She had never wanted to _hurt_ her sister like this before.

A smile flitted across Daphne's face. It was not a pretty smile; it was the careless sort of smile the winner bestowed on the vanquished as they claimed their prize. "After all, Tori, if you _really_ wanted to stay, you could have broken free. That's what our _perfect_ brother would do, right? The Slytherin hero extraordinaire?"

"Shut up." The jab struck a nerve, but Astoria had promised herself months ago that she would never let her sister make her cry again.

"Maybe that's why you haven't told him. You're afraid he'll judge you for being _weak."_

 _"I'm not weak."_

"Mm. Well, I'm not so sure about that. Any halfway decent witch or wizard can break the Imperius Curse, it seems to me. You and I both know that our brother can do it; your darling hero _Harry Potter_ can do it; I'm pretty sure _most_ Gryffindors can do it. That's why I had to save you from yourself, Tori - you like to _play_ at being the hero, but really, you're just a little girl playing dress up with your mother's clothes." Her smile widened. "Or, big brother's clothes, I suppose. You _know_ he'd think you're weak if he knew."

"I know he'd get you sent to Azkaban." It was an ugly thing to say, but she meant it - and now that she'd said it, she knew that it was true.

"Probably," her sister conceded. "He'd try, anyway. You always were his favorite. Mum and Dad might have something to say about it, though."

Astoria didn't have a comeback to that, and the more she looked at her sister, the harder it was to block out memories of that long, awful night - of being led down a hallway and through a door that she didn't want to go through, carried by her body as though she were an inconsequential traveler. She could still hear her sister's high, clear voice saying "Imperio."

It was a different moment now. The sun was streaming in through the windows, and theoretically, that war-torn, violence-ridden world she'd inhabited for the better part of two years had been replaced by an era of relative peace.

But right now, in _this_ moment, she still couldn't see the light.

She did the only thing she could think of doing.

She ran.

It wasn't until she knocked on her brother's door that it occurred to her that she really hadn't thought this through. Her mind had been entirely focused on going somewhere that her sister wouldn't follow; she hadn't considered any of the logistics.

Her brother was married with two children, both of them young. He had a demanding job that had become all the more so in the year since the war had ended. It was entirely possible that he wouldn't have the time or inclination to host his sixteen year sister for an indefinite amount of time.

But she had to try. She couldn't go back.

There was light streaming through the small glass panes just above eye level. She knocked. After a moment, she heard footsteps inside, and then the door swung open.

"Astoria?"

She looked up. Her brother, to his credit, was reacting to his youngest sister's random appearance at his door remarkably well. His brow was furrowed slightly, but his smile was genuine, and when her lower lip started to tremble, he quickly stepped back and ushered her inside.

"Can I stay with you?" she asked as soon as the door had closed.

He frowned, but he didn't refuse her request, which she took heart in. If the answer was an absolute, unreserved no, he would have had no compunction about saying so. "Why?" he asked after a long pause.

She swallowed hard. "I - I just need - I don't know."

Her lower lip was trembling again.

Her brother sighed, put an arm around her shoulders, and guided her into the living room. "Sit," he told her, pushing her gently toward the couch. She settled into it, winding the soft cotton of the green blanket through her hands. "Why?"

Astoria steeled herself. "I can't be at home anymore. It's not the same." She stared at her brother, begging him to see her without asking too many questions.

After a very, very long pause, he asked, "What happened?" Her sudden terror must have shown on her face, because his words tumbled over each other as he quickly amended the statement. "Astoria, if someone did something, it's not your fault. It's their fault, and I'll deal with it. They won't hurt you again."

His voice was so very _earnest_ \- but then, Brendon had never quite been a typical Slytherin. He'd never quite been a typical anything.

Astoria, however, couldn't shake the feeling that her sister was right, and that Brendon _would_ judge her if he knew.

And, however much she hated her sister right now, she wasn't quite ready to get Daphne sent to Azkaban. It was enough to be away from her.

So she shook her head.

Brendon sighed. She heard him get up, and after a minute, she felt his weight settle onto the couch next to her. "Will it make you feel safer?"

She nodded without speaking.

He put an arm around her shoulder. "All right. I'll fix it."

It took Astoria a minute to collect herself to force out, "Thanks."

He got up. "I'm sorry I left you there. I won't do it again."

She wasn't sure what he was talking about - at Hogwarts? During the battle? At their parents'?

In the end, it didn't much matter. "Thanks," she whispered again as he left the room.


End file.
